"Klein’s
Story" - A Single Episode Adventure
"Survival of the Fittest" - An Adventure
in Three Episodes

Survival of the Fittest and
Klein’s Story
(Jonathan Clements)

The second
release of stories in the season for the Seventh
Doctor and
new companion Elizabeth Klein (played
by Tracey Childs) comprises a three-part story called "Survival
of the Fittest", by Jonathan Clements, and a
one-part adventure called "Klein’s Story" by
John Ainsworth and Lee Mansfield. Both stories were
recorded on 7th and 8th September 2009 and have been
directed by John Ainsworth.

"Klein’s
Story" features a very special guest star
- none other than Eighth
Doctor Paul McGann himself!
Producer David Richardson has explained, ‘Paul
will be appearing in "Klein’s Story",
playing the enigmatic role of Johann Schmidt... Someone
who we discover is a key player in Klein’s
life!’

This
story is written by John Ainsworth and Lee Mansfield. ‘Klein
first appeared in "Colditz"’, John
Ainsworth has said, ‘and anyone who has listened
to that adventure will already have an inkling as to
who exactly Schmidt is and why Paul is playing him.
It's been great to take the bare bones of Klein's back-story
and flesh it out in to a full episode. I think Paul's
guest appearance makes it quite a special little story’. "Colditz" is
a Seventh Doctor and Ace story and was released
in October 2001.

"Klein’s
Story" will allow listeners find out a little more
about the new Nazi companion. Elizabeth Klein is an anomaly.
A renegade from an alternate future in which the Nazis
won World War II, In an attempt to get to know his latest
companion, the Doctor invites Klein to tell him how exactly
she came to be in possession of his TARDIS and of the
events that led to her trip into the past to Colditz
Castle.

Seventh Doctor

As
explained by Director and co-writer John Ainsworth: ‘To
an extent, "Klein’s Story" is based on
information we were given briefly in "Colditz",
so it’s dramatising something that was already
there. But it all becomes important, what motivates her
to do what she does - particularly in the final story’.

‘The
interesting thing is that although there’s a whole
fabulous alien story with the Vrill, the first episode
sees The Doctor and Klein locked together in the TARDIS,
and The Doctor decides to start conversing with Klein’,
Tracey Childs has revealed. ‘We get to hear
Klein’s
story before "Colditz", before she travelled
to 1944. Why she travelled there, who persuaded her,
who else was in her life... So it was fabulous for me
to get to flesh out Klein, to find out the man she was
in love with, and so on. You also have this fabulous
character Schmidt, who Klein gets close to, and who is
the person who persuades her to travel to 1944. She gets
a little too close to Schmidt, which is why she has such
an extreme reaction when she finds out who he is...’

Following
on from "Klein’s Story" is the three
part story "Survival of the Fittest" in which
The hive of the Vrill bears the scars of a terrifying
cataclysm. Only a handful remain alive, hatched after
the holocaust of the mysterious Winterlack. The Vrill
seek a new Authority. They find the Doctor, a two-legged
creature who can lead them to survival. He must solve
the mystery of the Carrion beast that haunts the lower
chambers. He must face the Winterlack that still stalk
the mountains. And he must find a path that does not
lead to extinction...

This story
shows us a softer side of Klein. ‘It’s been
written so that there have been other adventures - this
is just the first one you hear about’, explains
Tracey Childs, ‘But it’s an interesting one,
because you see Klein seeing an oppressed insect race,
and having compassion for them, She’s outraged
on their behalf at the humans that are destroying their
world, and yet she doesn’t have too many scruples
about destroying human beings herself... It’s good
to see her getting a little emotion and humanity; to
see her growing up’.

‘I
didn’t want the audience to sympathise with her’,
adds John Ainsworth. ‘If she’s likeable,
I think that’s good. Someone who has extreme views
is not always a moustache-twirling villain’.

Klein’s
relationship with The Doctor is evolving, too – as
revealed by Tracey Childs: ‘Because they’re
thrown together in this small space, and because they’ve
had several other unheard adventures, they’ve come
to a kind of uneasy relationship. Whether Klein really
gets on with The Doctor or whether she’s just biding
her time is another matter! Klein starts to realise just
how much he’s manipulating her, and how much he’s
responsible for obliterating her past, and therefore
her future. If he thinks she’s going to take that
lying down, he’s very much mistaken! Cos this is
Klein! You’ve got the bizarre dual thing of her
being outraged at these insects against whom mass genocide
is taking place, but at the same time she’s plotting
revenge against The Doctor!’.

Companion
Chronicles

This
release also includes the twelfth and final part of "The
Three Companions" - the 12-part Companion Chronicles
mini-series which are a bonus feature on the monthly Doctor
Who plays since April 2009. Each of the 10-minute
episodes has been written by Marc Platt and has been
directed by Lisa Bowerman.This
special story brings together Sir Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart
(aka The
Brigadier) (played by Nicholas Courtney) and Polly (played
by Anneke Wills), who discover that their past travels
with The Doctor share a common link... Meanwhile, Thomas
Brewster (played by John Pickard) is watching from
a distance, and he is now the owner of a stolen TARDIS...

Also
starring in this episode is Russell Floyd.

Episode
Twelve: "The Sacrifice": As London floods,
can Polly and Thomas Brewster save the Brigadier from
the clutches of the Hunter?

Big Finish Magazine
- Vortex: Issue 12 (February 2010)

Vortex: Issue 12

Issue
12 of 'Vortex - The Big Finish Magazine' was also sent out to subscribers with this release.

In
this issue...

1.
Editorial -
Nicholas Briggs
2. Sneak Previews and Whispers - Jago and Litefoot – Series
1 Box set and Doctor Who - The Companion Chronicles: "The
Time Vampire"

On
a distant world, the Doctor and Klein discover that
the insect-like race that they come to know as the
Vrill have been call but wiped out by the mysterious
and terrifying Winterlack. Discovering the true nature
of the Winterlack, Klein is cast out of the Vrill
nest into the jungle beyond. There, she is forced
to confront the Winlerlack threat alone.

In
the Vrill nest, the Doctor desperately searches for
a way to save the Vrill from extinction. But the odds
are against him and time is running out.

On the Inside Cover:

Writer’s Notes: Jonathan Clements

My
grandmother was convinced she’d been had.
After gassing the nest and plugging up the holes,
the exterminator returned a few days later to check
on it. When he unplugged the entrance, a bunch
of wasps flew out and away. But he assured us that
the nest was dead, and that the fugitives were
merely the last hatchlings, from post-apocalyptic
eggs.

The
idea of insect civilisation brings questions of
its own. How would it operate? How would they feel
about being born, already forced into incontrovertible
specialisms? As her first act after hatching, a
newborn bee queen will murder her twin sister in
the neighbouring cocoon. Every insect must know
its place. When Big Finish asked me to think on
the implications of taking Klein’s ideology
to logical conclusions, I drew on my childhood
memories, and the concept of a group of creatures,
born alone in the dark in the ruins of their world,
then freed to fly away to an unknown fate. Where
did they think they were going? Were they only
following orders?

Writer’s Notes: John Ainsworth

Having
decided that Survival of the Fittest would
work better as a three-part story, I immediately
thought that it would he a great opportunity to
tell Klein’s back-story in her own words.
It also gave us the chance to feature Paul McGann
in an unusual guest-star role!

If
you’ve already heard Klein’s original
adventure, Colditz, hopefully you’ll enjoy
this dramatised reminder of what was briefly spoken
about in that story. By listening to Klein’s
Story, new listeners don’t really need to
have heard Colditz at all to understand this trilogy
of adventures (although you should, because it’s
very good and it’s got David
Tennant in it
as a Nazi!).

I
soon discovered that writing a script from scratch is a different experience
from script-editing another author’s work. Writing can be a painful
but rewarding experience. I am very thankful that I was able to work with
my co-author, Lee Mansfield, who put the flesh and the flair on my bare
bones of a script. We hope you enjoy this glimpse into Klein’s lost
past.

He
has been exploring the universe for hundreds of years. He fights injustice. He
defeats evil. He helps people. In the past, the Doctor has shared his adventures
with friends, but now he travels clone. In this regeneration, the Doctor can
be impish, devious even, but also greatly compassionate; whimsy and melancholy
do battle inside this persona, but the good and the just can always rely on him.

A
committed and ambitious Nazi from an alternative future in which Germany won
the war. Dr Elizabeth Klein made the fatal mistake of travelling bock in time
to Colditz Castle in 1944 in order to meet the Doctor. Unwittingly, her own actions
returned time to its proper course, Germany lost the war and now Klein is all
that is left of a future that no longer exists, if she can’t return home,
then she is determined to recreate the world that only she remembers. The key
to her dreams is the Doctor, someone she never expected to see again.